NRA president slams Journal News, Gawker

1/10/13 9:50 AM EST

National Rifle Association president David Keene has criticized the Journal News and Gawker for publishing lists of gun-permit owners in their area, calling it "an incredibly irresponsible... attempt by the elite to demonize people who own firearms legitimately.”

"In the minds of these people, folks that own firearms are evil,” Keene said in a rare interview with Brooklyn GOP Radio. “You saw how the Gawker website listed all these people, what they described them as. And I’m not going to repeat it on the air, but the fact of the matter is, they see anyone who is involved in the shooting sports, who owns a firearm for whatever reason, as somebody that they hate.”

Earlier this week, Gawker published an already public list of every gun permit owner in New York City, referring to them as "assholes." The move followed the controversy sparked last month by the West Nyack, N.Y.,-based Journal News, which published a list of gun-permit owners in Westchester and Rockland counties. (It tried to the same in Putnam county, but faced opposition from local officials.)

Keene cited the publications as evidence of the disparity between "elite media" and the rest of America.

"The whole battle over the Second Amendment has little to do with crime or any of these things” Keene told Brooklyn GOP Radio. “It has to do with culture and the view that different people have about what kind of a country this ought to be.”

"It wasn’t until the culture wars of the late 1960′s, 70′s and 80′s that, all of a sudden, the Second Amendment became anathema to liberals who viewed it, really I think culturally, as a as symbol of an America they didn’t like, an America in which people took responsibility for themselves and for the protection of their families, an America which didn’t look to the state for the answer to all of its problems,” he said. “And the media, the elite media, if anything, represents that view more than almost any segment of our society.”

Politicker's Hunter Walker, who first reported on the interview, has more details here. He also has details on Keene's criticisms of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo here.